Microsoft announced today that its Kaizala group-messaging service is live now and available to all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial customers across more than 180 markets worldwide.
Microsoft’s Kaizala supports group text messaging along with video as well as audio calls making it more or less like WhatsApp and Facebook Messanger. “Indeed, Kaizala emerged as a project within Microsoft as a business alternative to consumer messaging apps”, according to Raúl Castañón Martínez, a senior analyst at 451 Research.
With its business focus, Kaizala has both security and administrative features that consumer-focused tools like tend to lack. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and the Kaizala management portal allows admins to create and manage groups, for example, as well as define group policies. Users don’t need a Microsoft account to access Kaizala but can sign up with their phone number.
Other added features include:
- Users can now also delete messages in a one-on-one or group chat within an hour of sending it, while group admins can do so anytime.
- There’s an option to annotate images, make video calls, and send yourself a private note.
As a part of today’s announcement, Microsoft has also promised to incorporate Kaizala into Microsoft Teams in phases over the next 12 to 18 months. Additionally, the enterprise messaging platform has added a bunch of new capabilities including @mentions to draw the attention of a specific group chat member.
In the future, Microsoft has plans to add several other features to Kaizala like:
- support for right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic,
- the ability to invite users via email,
- the option to sync your organization’s Azure Active Directory within Kaizala.
- Admins will also receive a new capability to designate policy management tasks to dedicated admins as part of a future update.